


the angel, condemned to purgatory

by distanceseventeen



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Dissociation, Gen, Horror, Undertale Genocide Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22297654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distanceseventeen/pseuds/distanceseventeen
Summary: For once, the reset doesn't work the way it should.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 27





	the angel, condemned to purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a mild fugue state, so if it doesn't make sense, I apologize. Please enjoy, I guess.
> 
> Heed the tags. This is one of my more messed-up ideas, and could be potentially triggering to certain people.

You awaken sitting on the cavern floor, staring at your own corpse. There is static blurring your vision, a painful ringing in your ears, and though you no longer have lungs to breathe with, you could swear the air tastes like dust. When you reach for Chara, you receive no response. It is as if whatever signal let you communicate has jammed.

You have died many times before, but always, you return to the past, hands cupping the cold light of a save point. It is a different experience to see the empty shell of your body. You've grown so far past horror that you can kill or die without the slightest bit of feeling, so it does not frighten you, but it does make you feel strange. You try to touch your own cheek. Your ghostly hand blurs into static.

Instead of trying to touch it again, you take stock of your corpse with a kind of detached interest. The Shyren's attack that killed you burst your eardrums before you died, and you can see the faint trails of blackened blood coming from your ears. Your dust-stained feet are still clad in pink ballet slippers. You look small. Pale. Discarded. The static makes it difficult to see well, but you think there's agony frozen on your face. The monster who killed you is long gone.

You try to stand. If you cannot reset, you will at least look around more. But instead of responding to you, your ghost stays frozen. You are unable to leave your corpse. Dully, you think that you should feel more distress about this. But even when you try to muster emotion, you feel nothing, nothing, nothing.

So you wait. The static moves across the fields of your vision like clouds across the sky. The light from the glowing mushrooms stays dim. No Grim Reaper comes to take you to an afterlife. The reset does not arrive. You realize that you would also be fine with oblivion -- you're so empty that you can be fine with anything -- but you do not fade, either. The ringing in your ears continues. You keep tasting dust.

Nobody comes to find your body. You've carved through every single monster you could find, and now this is the price. You would expect Flowey, at least, to come find you, but he never makes an appearance. You would think that time isn't passing, that you are caught in some kind of loop, but you realize after an eternity that your corpse has started to bloat with decay. You have simply been forgotten by everyone, including death itself.

This is probably some kind of punishment. You're tethered to your own corpse, watching it slowly decompose. Most people would call it a kind of hell. You can't bring yourself to care. The determination that pushed you is gone. All that remains are the deaths you were responsible for, and the deadly silence of your own soul. The glitches keep covering your vision. You don't look away.

_ Chara?  _ you ask.

If they respond, the ringing drowns it out.

Hours, days, and weeks pass, measured in the slow decomposition of your body. Your skin splits with rot. Your closed eyes sink further into your skull. Your sweater grows thick with mold. Still, nobody comes. You watch yourself rot, thinking of what you would do if this were not happening. It is all you can do.

Time passes on in a haze of static. 

Your determination does not come back.


End file.
